Organizations don’t all start their safety and health journey from the same place. Some are just beginning to formalize their efforts, while others have established programs but are working to embed safety and health more fully into planning and operations. Others have implemented formal occupational environmental, health and safety (EHS) management systems aligned with consensus standards such as ANSI/ASSP Z10 or ISO 45001. What matters most is not where an organization starts, but whether it has a clear, actionable pathway for improvement.

Programs as a Starting Point

OSHA recently highlighted its voluntary Safety Champions initiative, which is designed to help employers strengthen core elements of a workplace safety and health program. For many organizations, particularly small employers or those with limited resources, it can provide an accessible foundation. The initiative helps employers:

• Establish leadership accountability for safety
• Strengthen worker participation
• Identify and control common hazards
• Build a basic structure around training and hazard prevention

These steps can help employers move from reactive compliance toward more proactive risk management. Over time, however, sustained progress often involves a system-based approach.

When Programmatic Approaches Reach Their Limits

Program-based initiatives are typically focused on what practices should exist, including training, inspections, hazard controls and documentation. What they often do not fully address is how those practices are governed, sustained, measured and integrated into the broader business system.

As organizations mature, they begin to encounter questions such as:

• How do we ensure safety considerations are embedded into planning, procurement and change management?
• How do we evaluate whether our safety efforts are effective at a system level, not just activity by activity?
• How do we learn consistently, not only from incidents, but from what goes right?

These are systems questions, and they require systems-level answers.

The Role of Consensus Standards

This is where occupational health and safety management system standards like ANSI/ASSP Z10 and ISO 45001 come into play.

Unlike programmatic frameworks, these standards are built around a systems-based approach. They emphasize:

• Integration of safety and health into organizational strategy and decision-making
• Formal management review and continual improvement
• Risk-based thinking and management of change
• Clear roles for leadership and worker participation across the system

Rather than prescribing a checklist of activities, management system standards provide a structured approach for integrating EHS considerations into organizational planning, operations and continual improvement.

In short, programs help organizations start doing safety and health more intentionally. Systems help organizations manage safety and health as a core business function.  This distinction is especially important for organizations operating across global or multi-jurisdictional environments.

Building the Bridge: From Programs to Systems

The challenge for many organizations is not understanding this distinction but figuring out how to move from one stage to the next.

That bridge, moving from early, programmatic capability to mature, systems-based management, is where the profession increasingly needs support. This is also where ASSP’s strategic direction is focused.

ASSP’s Standards-Based User Groups (SBUGs) are designed to help organizations apply consensus standards in real-world settings. SBUGs are collaborative networks where EHS practitioners, employers and innovators work together to translate standards from static documents into measurable, living business systems.

Rather than treating standards as an end point, the SBUG framework supports organizations as they:

• Build systems aligned with Z10 and ISO 45001 principles
• Apply those systems to high-impact risk areas
• Learn from peer implementation and real-world data
• Improve continuously through structured feedback loops

SBUGs are not about certification or compliance. They are about capability building, systems maturity and sustained improvement.

Keeping the Distinction Clear

Programmatic initiatives and management system standards are not interchangeable. A voluntary safety program may provide a foundation, but it is not the same as a systems-based standard. At the same time, organizations are at different stages, and clear pathways help them keep moving forward.

EHS excellence is not achieved by declaring a finish line. It is achieved by helping organizations move step by step, toward systems that are integrated, resilient and effective over time.

What Comes Next

As the safety and health profession continues to evolve, the opportunity is not to debate starting points, but to clarify pathways. Programs can help organizations begin. Standards define what mature systems look like. And frameworks like ASSP’s SBUGs exist to help close the gap between the two.

Wherever an organization is today, the question is the same: What is the next step toward a system that truly protects people and strengthens performance?

That is the conversation the profession needs to keep having, and one ASSP is committed to leading.